


want your midnights

by coffee_hermit



Category: Happiest Season (2020)
Genre: F/F, Flirting, Roommates, dogs named after senators, formatting texting is difficult, text fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29482371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_hermit/pseuds/coffee_hermit
Summary: Riley feels… well, not like a homewrecker, exactly. She hadn’t done anything to break them up, only gotten caught in the blast zone. Guilt gnaws at her, anyway.
Relationships: Abby Holland/Riley Johnson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67





	want your midnights

**Author's Note:**

> title inspired by "New Year's Day" by Taylor Swift.
> 
> takes place in an alternate timeline where Harper denies being a lesbian and Abby leaves with John that night.

Riley hears - third or fourth hand - about Harper and Abby’s breakup just after New Year’s Day. She’s not even sure who she hears it from, only that one day she doesn’t know, and the next day she does. The few texts she and Abby had exchanged over Christmas still float at the top of her messaging app, taunting her, but she doesn’t try to text Abby. Better to let it go, or at the very least let the woman form some scar tissue. The blank, defeated look in Abby’s eyes as she’d escaped Harper’s house with her friend still haunts Riley. She knows that look too well, inside and out.

Riley feels… well, not like a homewrecker, exactly. She hadn’t done anything to break them up, only gotten caught in the blast zone. Guilt gnaws at her, anyway.

“You’re moping.” Kathleen points out one night, halfway through January. They’re sitting over a bottle of wine at the kitchen table on one of their rare overlapping nights off from the hospital. Kathleen’s mop of strawberry blonde hair is tied sloppily at the nape of her neck, and she’s scrolling through something on her phone. She doesn’t even bother to look up at Riley when she makes the pronouncement, and Riley glares at her.

“I’m not moping.” Riley shoots back, and gulps down another mouthful of wine.

Kathleen raises her eyes from her screen and gives Riley a leveling gaze. Riley reconsiders the merits of having long-term friendships. “You are moping. How the hell do you have time to date, anyway?”

“I don’t have time to date.” She says. It’s true. Aside from the occasional hookup, Riley doesn't have time to swipe through dating app profiles in the wee hours of the morning or night that she could be using for other things. Like sleeping. The spark of... whatever it had been, with Abby had been the first time in over a year that Riley had even gotten a chance to sit down with someone and have a conversation. It’s her bad luck that most of the conversations they'd shared had centered around Harper.

Kathleen shakes her head and goes back to her scrolling. “The faster you can admit it…” She tells her phone screen, “... the faster you can get over yourself and get laid. Valentine’s Day is around the corner, you gotta shoot your shot, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid, grandma.” She snaps back. Kathleen is a full six months older than Riley, and neither one of them ever lets the other forget about it. Riley likes to think it’s one of the bedrocks of their friendship. Kathleen usually just rolls her eyes. She can’t really argue with Kathleen, though. If she’s not moping, then why doesn’t she text Abby? They’re not in high school. The worst that could happen is that Abby doesn’t text her back, which would leave her…. right where she is now, actually.

She finishes her glass of wine and most of another one before she has a text that sounds okay, but she proofreads it once more just before she hits send.

_R: Hey, just wanted to check in and say that my lunch offer still stands, if you're ever in the New Haven area. I promise I won't make you sing._

She hits send and dumps the rest of her wine down her throat. Kathleen looks up from her phone and grins.

“Proud of you!”

She waves her hand at Kathleen. “I’m going to bed. You’re a terrible roommate.”

“Uh huh.” Kathleen tells her.

Riley doesn’t look at her phone again until she’s brushing her teeth the next morning. Abby’s response is from the night before, a single text:

**A: That'd be great.**

That’s it. No follow up text, nothing. Riley spits in the sink, and peeks at her phone at least a dozen more times before getting on the train. As the car clunks along and she sways back and forth with her fellow commuters, she checks her phone again, promising herself it’ll be the last time until her break later that day.

To her surprise, a notification. But it isn't a new text. She swipes her phone open and Instagram pops up, alerting her that she has a new follower.

Riley scrolls past the name and bio, it isn't anyone she recognizes. post_ralphealite's posts are mostly art - paintings and sculptures with no discernable theme tying anything together. Riley taps on a lonely painting near the top of a man standing on a brick roof, a pale blue sky above him. The caption gives the name of the artwork, dates and artist, and a short paragraph about the piece not unlike what one might see at a museum. Riley clicks back to the profile, but her phone beeps at her again, still annoyed she isn't psychic.

She has a new text from Abby.

**A: Instagram suggested I follow you, so that's me. You'll probably get another follower soon, that's my friend John.**

**A: Sorry in advance. He wouldn't leave me alone until I told him I was texting you.**

Riley barely has time to blink before she’s alerted again to Instagram, and a new follower. This profile is less opaque, clearly a professional account: a dark haired man smiles in different photos with people, all of them holding books. Riley recognizes him from Christmas. Abby’s knight in burberry.

Riley hesitates, and then texts Abby back before she can completely talk herself out of it.

_R: Your account is way more interesting than mine, so I'm afraid you've got the upper hand._

Was that stupid? Who says things like "you've got the upper hand," anymore? The response is fast:

**A: I like the dog pictures. I didn't know you had a dog.**

_R: Wendy is my roommate's spoiled brat. I didn't know you were an artist._

**A: I'm not. Studying art history. Grad school.**

There is a curtness to Abby's texts that already feels familiar. Riley is reminded of the tense way Abby held herself when they'd bumped into each other on the sidewalk in Pittsburgh. Riley had spent a long time forcing herself to feel comfortable being out, being herself, in public, and she was good at hiding her awkwardness nowadays. But there is something strangely charming about Abby's embarrassed smiles, her short sentences. The way she'd held her shoulders up near her ears until they'd sung together at the bar, and Riley had heard her laugh.

And then Riley's brain spoils it all by reminding her: sure, I bet Harper thought it was cute, too. It’s enough to annihilate the smile that had been curling the edges of her mouth. Riley’s sick to death of Harper and her long fucking shadow finding her everywhere she goes. She closes her eyes and shoves her phone deep into her bag, and reminds herself about all that radiation poisoning she’s still recovering from.

Riley doesn't look at her phone again until it rings loudly at her, just as she steps off the train later that night. She chats with her mother despite her exhaustion, and listens to whatever gossip Vera has to share, all of it trickling in one ear and out the other. It doesn't matter that Riley can't keep any of her mother's drama straight, she merely wants a willing ear to vent to, and as an only child, more often than not, the burden falls to Riley. It’s a job she’s good at, but when she finally gets home and bids her mother goodbye, it’s a relief to set her cell on the table and close her eyes.

She doesn't open them for a long time. Not until Kathleen shoves the front door open, plastic bags rustling in hand.

"Did your phone die at work? Why didn't you text me back?" She demands instantly, dropping two heavy plastic bags on the table. Rows of "HAVE A NICE DAY" emblazoned along the sides mock Riley. "I got you Thai anyway. Yes, I know I'm amazing."

"You're amazing." Riley intones, deadpan, and Kathleen grins at her. "I've been avoiding my phone today. Someone told me to text someone else..." She waves her hands around, and rolls her eyes. "And then someone was awkward and weird and reminded someone else of their ex, so..." She shoves a dumpling in her mouth while Kathleen frowns at her.

"Is one of these someone's me? Because I'm not taking responsibility for you being weird. We've been over this before."

"Moral of the story: I am not getting laid." She finishes, and Kathleen snorts, and waggles her hand in the direction of Riley's phone. Riley scoots it away from her an inch, and Kathleen's frown deepens.

"When was the last time you looked at your notifications?"

Riley wrinkles her nose. She might be a coward, but she still knows better than to lie to Kathleen. "Nine a.m." Riley mutters around a mouthful of pad thai, and Kathleen groans.

"Come on, I'll do a dramatic reading of whatever she sent you. It can't be that bad."

Riley grabs her phone out from under Kathleen's hand and flips it away from her. "Absolutely not. And fuck you."

Kathleen levels a stern look at her. "Venmo me for Thai or get reading." It’s a trick, of course. Either way, Riley is going to have to open her phone.

"I repeat, go fuck yourself." Riley tells her, but she swipes her phone open anyway.

There are eight texts and two missed calls from Kathleen, two more text messages from Abby waiting for her, and seven notifications from Instagram.

"Oh, God." Riley mutters, horrified. Kathleen cranes her neck to look, but Riley tilts her phone away. She opens instagram first, that seems scarier. Just how many of Abby's - and Harper's - friends are now following her?

Instead of a string of new handles, it’s six new likes, all on pictures of Wendy from the last month. All of them are from Abby's friend John. There’s also a DM request from him. She wonders if this had anything to do with Abby's "sorry in advance" text. Riley ignores the DM request and swipes out of instagram.

The texts are from Abby:

**A: My account started as a school project in undergrad. It just kinda spiralled from there.**

**A: your roommate's dog's name is Wendy? Like from Peter Pan?**

Riley can feel the traitorous smile from the train returning. She glances up at Kathleen, who is watching her smugly.

"I'm not going to say I told you so, but..."

Riley waves her hand at Kathleen, universal sign to shut up, and Kathleen snorts again and pulls herself up from the table. "Since we're out of booze I'm going to make some coffee, you want any?"

"No!" Riley shouts back, her fingers already tapping out a response.

_R: Wendy is named after human Wendy, she's that senator from Texas who filibustered in pink sneakers several years ago. Kathleen is from Texas and is a giant nerd about womens' healthcare politics._

The response comes by the time Kathleen returns with coffee.

**A: Cool.**

Cool. Cool? Riley doesn't know how to respond to that. She frowns at her phone screen. "She thinks you naming Wendy after Wendy Davis is cool." Riley tells Kathleen, who grins at dog Wendy, currently curled up on the couch, rightly ignoring them both.

"Is that all she said?"

"Yup." Riley says, her words taking on the caustic flat tone that has gotten her broken up with more than once. "She's in grad school for art history, what do I ask her about?"

"What's her favorite painting? Or museum, maybe?" Kathleen shrugs. "You remember Hairy Ben, the guy from second year? Played the drums? One time I asked him who his favorite drummer was and he went on a rant about Kurt Cobain for like, three hours."

"Was... Kurt Cobain a drummer?"

Kathleen sips her coffee. "I have no idea."

"That's incredibly unhelpful, darling."

"Ask her what her favorite painting is."

Riley does. it doesn't take long for bubbles to pop up on her screen, blinking at her hopefully. She waits.

"What did she say?"

"She's still typing."

As if they can hear the hope in her voice, the bubbles disappear.

When they don't reappear in the next minute, Riley slides her phone into the pocket of her slacks and stands, and Kathleen blinks up at her, just as hopeful as the bubbles.

"I'll let you know when she responds, Cyrano." She tells her, and escapes to the quiet of her bedroom. It’s tiny, barely enough room for a single bedframe and all of Riley's shoes, but it’s tidy and organized, a reflection of the person Riley is constantly trying to become. She'd spent years idolizing the clean, sharp suits and perfectly blown out hair of the women her mother runs with: anesthesiologists and politicians and CEO’s who seem to have their lives put together in ways teenage Riley could only dream of. After Harper outed her, she'd started wearing blazers everywhere, a statement of her queerness and her impenetrability at once, and never looked back. Even when most of her classmates spent finals week in a state of grungy exhaustion, Riley had found time to put on mascara whenever she could. Having that level of control was and is a relief when she seems always on the verge of collapse. Even now, a year into her residency, she clings to her shoes all lined up against one wall, her suit jackets hung up in a row, her sheets folded carefully against her headboard.

Abby's “cool” is still haunting her in a way that order and precision can't quite tame. She plugs her phone in and ignores it the rest of the night.

In the morning, three texts are waiting for her.

The first is from Kathleen: taking trash out again u heathen please take it out next time or im going to feed Wendo ur fancy fucking cheese youve been warned

In typical Kathleen fashion, the text contains neither punctuation nor any kind of grammatical context. Early in their friendship, Riley had asked Kathleen how the hell she’d been accepted into med school if she didn’t know how to use commas. Kathleen had asked her on the spot if she wanted to be roommates the following year. The memory still makes Riley smile.

The other two texts are from Abby.

**A: That's a tough one, you're not the first friend to ask me that. Do you have a favorite bone?**

The second text is an image. At first, Riley thinks it might be a poor quality thing, pixelated and grayscale, but when she taps on it and it fills her phone screen, she realizes her mistake. Black and white jagged lines criss-cross each other, the black at the edges of the canvas, surrounding a central jagged white spot in the middle. It’s stark and haunting, and Riley is surprised, although she isn't sure what she had been expecting. The painting is simple, but strangely threatening. She is reminded of one of her exes showing her a Hitchcock movie years ago, she forgets which one. The painting and the movie both feel tense. Riley thinks about Abby’s nervous smile.

Abby's caption below says simply: Alabama, Lewis, 1960

There’s no description or context like Riley had seen on Abby's instagram, so she opens the app and scrolls down through the pictures until she finds the same painting. Posted two years prior, the caption has the same title for the painting, but a fuller name for the artist: Norman Lewis, 1960. The paragraph below it details Lewis's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement and his lack of notoriety during his lifetime despite many contributions to the Abstract Expressionism movement.

Riley vaguely recalls learning about abstract expressionism during an elective in undergrad, but even this instagram post tells her more than she can recall from that class.

She thinks about the word “friend” in Abby's text. Are they friends? Maybe.

She responds:

_R: I don't have a favorite bone. I love all my children equally._

_R: I don't know if I'd call that painting beautiful, but Norman seems like a cool guy._

Cool guy. What is she, fifteen? Is she going to refer to him as a "dude" next? She deletes the last two words and inserts "interesting artist" before deleting those too and finally sending "interesting guy."

Ugh.

By the time she’s getting on the train, Abby has texted her a link to a youtube video with the caption, "Norman Lewis Interview, 1968"

She types back.

_R: Thanks. I'll watch that when I get off the train._

Bubbles appear underneath her text.

**A: You're a fancy doctor and you take public transit?**

_R: I am a very unfancy resident and yes, those loans aren't going to pay for themselves._

The ellipses on her phone blink at her for a couple of seconds, disappear, then reappear, and then disappear again with no new text. Riley waits another ten seconds and then adds:

_R: Even my fabulously wealthy parents have limits. They paid for my undergrad, I'm responsible for everything else._

Abby doesn't text back for several minutes. It's not until Riley is stepping off the train at the station when she feels her phone buzz in her pocket.

Abby's response is an image, with no caption: a man is laid out on a table, a group of men dressed in black surrounding him. It's clearly a surgery theater, although by the look of the men standing over the prone figure, it was painted at least a hundred years ago, or made to look like it.

Before Riley can form a response - and really, all she wants to send is a question mark - Abby texts her.

**A: I've never really liked this painting, but I've always really loved the way science and art converge, the way we document fear and turn it into something studied and beautiful.**

Riley has fully stopped walking. Jostled on both sides by commuters, she watches as the ellipses pop up below Abby's latest text, disappear, and then a moment later, another text:

**A: this one hangs here in philly, if you ever want to see it in person.**

Riley blinks at her phone, struck with the image of wandering around a museum with Abby, listening to the quiet, nervous woman talk about the convergence of art and science, and she wants it so badly that she taps out a response before she gives herself a second to analyze anything that's happening.

_R: That sounds great, but I promise you I'm very stupid about art. Think you could be a good tour guide?_

Abby's response is quick this time.

**A: only if you let me show you my favorites.**

_R: deal._

**Author's Note:**

> art mentioned:
> 
> brick roof painting: Rooftop, Hughie Lee-Smith  
> black and white jagged painting: Alabama, Norman Lewis  
> surgery theatre painting: Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), Thomas Eakins


End file.
